The present invention relates generally to mobile wireless communications and, more particularly, relates to a system and method for locating and tracking mobile telephone devices via the Internet.
The advent of wireless personal communications devices has revolutionized the telecommunications industry. Cellular, personal communications services (xe2x80x9cPCSxe2x80x9d) and other services provide wireless personal communications to businesses and individuals at home, in the office, on the road, and to any other location the wireless network can reach. Wireless telephone subscribers no longer must use public telephones along the road or wait until returning to the home or office to check messages or to return important business calls. Instead, wireless subscribers can carry out day-to-day business from the privacy of an automobile, from a remote job site, while walking along the airport concourse, and anywhere else that a personal communications signal is accessible.
Thus, it is no surprise that since the introduction of the cellular telephone service, the number of wireless telephone subscribers has increased steadily. Today, there are a staggering number of wireless telephone subscribers whose ranks are growing rapidly. In fact, many households have multiple wireless telephones in addition to their conventional land line services.
With a market of this size, there is fierce competition among hardware manufacturers and service providers. In an attempt to lure customers, most providers offer handsets with desirable features or attributes such as small size, light weight, longer battery life, speed dial, and the like. Many recent additions to the marketplace include multi-functional handsets that even provide pocket organizer functions integrated into the wireless handset. Most manufacturers, however, are still scrambling to add new features to their communications devices to snare a portion of this booming market.
One way in which new features are added to wireless communication devices is by integrating the devices into the Web. Such integration allows the countless services available through the Web to be extended to wireless communications devices. Moreover, some mobile telephones have the ability to determine their own location, such as through use of GPS. The present invention takes advantage of this intriguing combination of location self-determination and connectivity to the Web.
The present invention is directed toward a system and method for locating and tracking mobile telephone devices via the Internet. In general, a mobile telephone device publishes its location to a server computer that is connected to the World Wide Web (xe2x80x9cWebxe2x80x9d). Subsequently, the information about the location of the mobile telephone device is available from the Web server. In this fashion, the location of a mobile telephone device can be obtained through the Internet.
More specifically, the mobile telephone device can publish its location either manually or automatically. In the manual publication process, the user takes a specific action to cause the mobile telephone device to publish its location. Once the user has manually instructed the mobile telephone device to publish its location, the device acquires its GPS location, establishes a communications link with the Web server and provides its location to the Web server.
Alternatively, the user""s action could instruct the mobile telephone device to automatically publish its location. In this embodiment, once the user has instructed the mobile telephone device to automatically publish its location, the mobile telephone device periodically acquires its GPS location and then establishes a communications link with the Web server and provides its location to the server. This periodic communication continues until the mobile telephone device is instructed to discontinue automatic publishing of its location.
In another embodiment of the automatic publishing process, the Web server periodically queries the mobile telephone device. To do so, the Web server sends a message to the mobile telephone device requesting the device""s location. When the mobile telephone device receives the request, it responds by acquiring its GPS location and then sending the location to the server.
These and other aspects and embodiments of the present invention will be apparent in the following description, claims and drawings.